46 Eira
Eira
The graying man in shining plate armor, the one Hugo had called Lord General Kerrigan, the Iron Empire’s leader, had headed
straight for her as soon as he had seen her casting Beatrice. Eira hoped the conjured hand was doing what she had bidden it
to do, but from the glimpses she’d taken of the fight outside, it looked like it wasn’t going particularly well.
Eira ran around the bar, pulling out her dagger and heading for the door as the lord general swiped at her, her hood hanging
over her head and obscuring her face from the frighteningly large man in front of her.
She ducked, trying to run out the door, but Lord General Kerrigan caught the bottom of her cloak and pulled her toward him,
grabbing her by the throat and squeezing.
“I didn’t think Hugo would stoop so low as to travel with a wi—” he started as he lifted his hand to rip her hood off.
Eira closed her eyes and willed the Flow to do something, anything to make him let go of her. She felt the surge of power, shocking and intoxicating, running through her fingers. Eira instinctively pressed her hands against the lord general’s sides, and she felt the lightning leave her all at once.
“Argh!” Lord General Kerrigan yelled, doubling over and dropping Eira, her hood slipping off of her head as she got up and
ran out the open tavern door toward Hugo and Evangeline.
As she stepped into the clearing, she saw Hugo and Evangeline running to her, and the Iron Retinue soldiers turning to face
her. Her dagger had fallen, but she had another strapped to her waist. As she reached to grab it she felt a vicious tug on
her braid.
“You bitch, you shocked me,” Lord General Kerrigan snarled, spinning Eira around by her braid and looking down at her, features
contorted with seething hatred as Eira screamed from the agony ripping through her skull at the force of the pull.
“Leave her alone!” Hugo yelled.
Lord General Kerrigan stopped dead in his tracks, his jaw going slack before he let Eira’s hair go.
“Eira?” he breathed shakily, steel-gray eyes that matched hers full of so many questions and waiting for a response.
How did he know her?
“I’m sorry, I d-don’t . . .” Eira stuttered as she slowly pointed her dagger out at him, eyes she’d only ever seen in the
mirror staring back at her.
“Her memory is gone, Lord General,” Hugo shouted.
Fury filled the man’s eyes, Eira’s eyes, as he looked to Hugo. “What did you do to my daughter?” the lord general said, unsheathing his sword.
Daughter? Eira felt faint, sick. What did he mean? She looked at Evangeline, whose face softened as they looked at each other, and
Eira knew the truth in an instant—they’d both kept this from her.
“She cast a memory spell on herself,” Hugo said, circling Lord General Kerrigan and Eira as she was frozen in place, unable to move as she tried desperately to process what was happening. “Trying to get away from the hellish world you created.”
“Eira, is this true?” Lord General Kerrigan whispered.
Eira opened her mouth to speak but didn’t know what to say.
“I’m going to kill you, Venton,” Lord General Kerrigan snarled, looking at Hugo before turning back to Eira. Silence enveloped
them as, for the briefest moment, the fighting stilled as the soldiers tried to fathom what to do in the face of Lord General
Kerrigan’s daughter appearing in front of them. But it only lasted a moment as Evangeline began swinging at the remaining
soldiers, only a single Soulless Knight and the lord general focused on Hugo and Eira.
“I did all of this for you,” Lord General Kerrigan said to Eira, ignoring the battle for the moment as his eyes swam with
some untold emotion. “I’ll fix this for you. I thought I lost you forever, my beautiful dau—”
“Why would she want anything to do with you when you ordered the execution of everyone like her?” Hugo interrupted in what
was a clear bid to get the lord general’s attention.
“Not everyone. I kept potions witches like her safe!” Lord General Kerrigan snapped.
“So you knew she was a witch? You knew, and you killed her people anyways?” Hugo shouted back.
“A potions witch!” Kerrigan screamed before turning to his soldiers. “Don’t fucking touch her. Not a hair on her head. Kill the others.”
Eira stumbled toward the mouth of the mines as Evangeline and Hugo fought, hand to her mouth as she panicked.
This couldn’t be real. She knew she needed to help.
She knew this was a death sentence of a fight without her magic.
Hugo swung at a Soulless Knight and Lord General Kerrigan, keeping them occupied as he blocked their blows and fought scrappily with both his sword and his fists.
Eira watched a punch connect with Lord General Kerrigan’s face as the hilt of a sword knocked into Hugo’s side before he lifted his sword to block a swing from the Soulless Knight.
Evangeline fought well, but less efficiently than Hugo. Her moves were frantic and more random, which was keeping the four
soldiers focused on her confused. Eira willed herself to move, to help the princess, but she was rooted in place, a shiver
running through her as she tried to process what she’d just found out.
Her father was the arbiter of the Iron Empire. Her father had killed the royal family. Her father had ordered the execution
of Eira and every witch like her. Her father didn’t know the true extent of her magic. Her father was a monster.
Her father was alive.
A part of her had hoped that when she’d gotten her memories back that, somehow, she would have been able to find her parents.
Hugo had told her that the Viscount Westcotte hadn’t died, but he’d never said what the viscount was doing . . . Apparently,
it was leading the empire. Why had she fled from him? There had to be a reason.
Eira vomited on the ground, suddenly and intensely as she continued to panic. Breathe, she thought.
“Agh!” she heard Evangeline yell as she was knocked onto her knees, one hand pressed to her gut and the other to the ground.
Eira could see blood seeping into the snow below the princess as one of the Soulless Knights positioned itself to finish her
while she was on the ground. She watched Hugo shove the butt of his sword into the other Soulless Knight, who rebounded too
quickly, Hugo’s face bloodied and his armor all but destroyed.
They were going to lose this—and then Eira would have no one.
No.
She wasn’t going to lose them.
Eira closed her eyes, feeling for an element . . . for anything. Willing the power she knew she had to flow through her, to save them all, to destroy the soldiers fighting them. To harm her father . . . but maybe not kill him.
The Flow called back to her with an answer. Stone. Eira latched onto it, feeling for the pull she had felt when she had summoned
the vines and snow and water. A tug in the Flow as she willed the element to come to her, to come to her and then go somewhere
else. The mine behind her was full of stone, stone and iron. She felt it come to her in multitudes, and she willed it to hit
the soldiers.
Eira opened her eyes as she cast, finally understanding how to feel the Flow without needing to deprive herself of sight,
her hands twisted as the stones flew out of the cavern mouth at the soldiers. She watched as a stone pummeled into the Soulless
Knight that had been swinging at Hugo, its arm flying off into the forest as a second stone knocked its legs out from under
it, dark blood spraying across the crisp white snow underfoot.
Eira screamed as she summoned more, dozens of mined pieces of iron-filled stone flying out of the cavern and hitting the soldiers,
their shouts drowned out as the barrage snuffed out their lives.
An archer was hit with one of the rocks, carrying their entire body across the clearing before pinning them against a tree,
a scream leaving them as they realized their fate. The second and third Soulless Knights were hit more than the others, stones
flying through them and taking chunks of their lifeless flesh with them. One rock slammed into the head of one of the knights
attacking Evangeline, detaching it from his shoulders and sending it skidding across the ground. Eira couldn’t control it,
not really, but the stones knew to fly and Eira stood with her arms out until she watched the final Soulless Knight fall.
The scene in front of her was gory and bloody, but her eyes were on Hugo, fallen to his knees, breathing heavily. Eira started
looking across the bloody and stone-littered ground for Lord General Kerrigan and Evangeline.
She spotted Lord General Kerrigan . . . no, her father, in the distance. He’d started running as soon as Eira’s rocks had started flying, and she locked eyes with him from across
the clearing as she lowered her hands. He was bleeding, a deep gash on his cheek trickling blood onto his iron armor, dented
by the very stone they’d refined to make it. Eira watched him limp away before taking a horse and riding out of her line of
vision. She stayed silent, letting him go.
Hugo scrambled to his feet as Eira noticed Evangeline, still on the ground, screaming and writhing in pain.
Eira sprinted to her, the princess surrounded by half a dozen soldier’s bodies, each of them lying unmoving. Evangeline’s
legs were pinned under one of the Soulless Knights and Hugo pushed them off of her as Eira ran to Evangeline’s head.
“Where does it hurt?” Eira asked, panicking.
Evangeline coughed up blood. “Everywhere,” she choked out, tears rolling down her cheek.
“Urgh,” Hugo grunted as he cleared the body off Evangeline, allowing Eira to see the full damage. Evangeline bled from a wound
on her waist, heavy, thick, and bright red.
“Hugo.” Eira pointed at the gaping hole in Evangeline’s torso. “Put direct pressure on that.”
He moved quickly, the princess screaming in agony as he pressed on the wound, her voice cracking from the power behind it.
Eira scanned her body quickly: legs, then pelvis, then . . . arms. She paled when she noticed one of the rocks she’d used
to take out the soldiers that had been attacking Evangeline. They’d all been so close to each other, and in her frantic state,
Eira hadn’t even thought of what the rocks could do to her friends.
Evangeline’s left arm had been severed at the elbow, crushed under one of the massive stones. Eira could see the mangled severed
hand stuck under the rock, mixed with the brain and bone of the head it had taken off.
“Eira,” Evangeline’s teeth chattered. “I am so cold.”
No, no. That was bad. Eira used her dagger to cut a strip off of her cloak and tie a tourniquet on Evangeline’s arm.
“We need to get her back to the tavern so I can fix her,” Eira stated, unsure of what else she could do in this wasteland
of bodies and ice.
“That’s a fifteen-minute walk at least, Eira . . . I don’t think she’s going to make it that long,” Hugo said, concern in his eyes. He was right.
“I need to be able to make a poultice. I need to save her!” Eira shouted, searching for a way to get to her the tavern faster . . .
except . . . that damned tavern owner had betrayed them. Evangeline was going to die here and Eira couldn’t do anything about
it . . . This was all her fault.
“Eira,” Hugo said as he grabbed her face in his bloody hands. “I don’t know a thing about magic, but I know it wasn’t the
poultice that healed me after the first Soulless Knight attacked us.”
Eira looked at him, a bruise already forming under his puffy eye as blood trickled down his neck from a head wound. Eira had
learned her magic could do so, so much harm. She looked at the carnage around her, the clearing littered with bodies and rocks
filled with iron ore. What scared her more was that this hadn’t even exhausted her, as if using the Flow was a muscle she
was finally using again. Witches were supposed to have limits. What she did should have been a limit, but she felt so good—better than she had in so long.
But for all the damage she’d done, she had somehow forgotten the good she’d done all these years, how she had healed people.
The Flow wasn’t just for harm, no matter what the Iron Empire said . . . no matter what her father said.
Eira looked at Hugo, determination in her eyes. She laid her hands on Evangeline’s side as the princess coughed up more blood.
“Eira,” she said, grabbing Eira’s arm with her remaining blood-covered hand, her bloodied stump moving as well, as if she was trying to use the other hand too. “I missed you, and I’m so glad we got to be friends again . . . even if only for . . . so little time.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Eira stated before looking back to the wound and feeling for the Flow once more.
“Keep her safe,” Evangeline coughed, turning her head to Hugo.
“You’ll be here to make sure I do,” he responded, watching Eira.
The Flow rose within her, a silent conversation happening between Eira and the magic she could wield. Harm or heal? it seemed to ask her; she willed the latter. A tidal wave of warmth washed over her and into her hands, her fingers burning
as the magic flowed into the deadly wound in Evangeline’s side. It felt so different from what she’d just cast. How could
anyone have ever thought this was bad?
Eira watched as the wound started knitting shut, the bleeding stopping slowly but surely. The arm remained raw, but whatever
Eira had done had staved off the worst. Evangeline would still need medical care, and desperately, but Eira had done enough
to stop her from dying.
A sob escaped Eira’s lips as she collapsed onto her bottom, sliding her knees in front of her and crying into her lap. Just
as Hugo moved to comfort her, they were interrupted.
“No!” a voice yelled from behind them.